The town of Konna, in central Mali, is of huge strategic value for linking the northern deserts held by the rebels with the highways to southern cities held by the French-backed Malian junta. The town has been reclaimed by the junta after several days of French attacks.

But while the junta revels in its “victory” and pledges to reclaim the rest of the nation, with French military help of course, the offensive has given international journalists their first look at “rebel-held” territory, as Konna has been since January 10, and the civilian cost of the French strategy of air strikes.

Much of Konna was destroyed in the seemingly random attacks, and helicopter gunships reportedly attacked and killed a family of four who were preparing food in the courtyard of their home. All told at least 12 civilians were killed, all by French forces.

Officials shrugged off the deaths, saying “mistakes happen,” and insisting that the slain would hold no ill will toward the French for retaking their town, or at least what is left of it, from the rebels.

France has in an unprecedented move called for a total media blackout in what many say is an attempt to save her image from damages caused upon her former colony Mali.

The ban on the media comes as the international Federation for Human rights issue a damning report accusing both the French and Malian troops of gross human rights violation.

In a meeting called to sensitize local journalists about the war in the north, Malian army introduced what they call the rule of engagement for any journalist wishing to cover the war in the north.

Analysts in the Malian capital Bamako say the media blackout could be linked to reports of grave human rights violation by the ground troops as echoed by the International Federation for Human Rights.
According to the federation, some people have been killed only for failure to carry valid identification documents, an accusation Malian authorities have denied.

According to the Malian military most of the journalists have to be trained about what happens in the battle field before they can access the areas currently being controlled by the anti government fighters.

The International Federation for Human Rights says over twenty people have so far been executed in the northern town of Sevare with more reports of execution reported in the towns of Niono and Mopti.

Meanwhile Burkinafaso has also joined in the conflict, deploying a contingent of one hundred and sixty soldiers in the northern town of Markala.

Evidence has been promised to a French court that could prove former President Nicolas Sarkozy accepted more than €50 million in campaign donations from ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

­Information pointing to the existence of such documents was revealed late last year by Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine. He’s currently facing corruption charges and is under investigation over allegations of his involvement in a money laundering operation between France and the Middle East, in which he is believed to have been involved for 20 years.

“I can provide you with details of the financing of Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign,”Le Parisien quoted Takieddine as saying. He told the judge the sums involved would exceed €50 million, as Sarkozy’s 2006-7 campaign was “abundantly” financed by Tripoli. The payments continued after Sarkozy’s victory, Takieddine added.

This document, translated from its original Arabic carries the signature of Musa Kusa, exiled former head of the Libyan overseas intelligence services. It states the existence of an “agreement in principle” to “subsidize the campaign of French Presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, with an amount valued at €50 million”.

He also claimed to be in possession of “evidence that three French companies in Libya have received contracts for fictitious services” to the tune of “more than €100 million.”

At a December 19 hearing, Takieddine said a number of meetings to organize the payments had taken place in 2006 and 2007 between Claude Gueant, Sarkozy’s chief of staff, and Gaddafi’s private secretary, Bashir Saleh. He said records of these meetings were in the possession of former Libyan Prime Minister Al Baghdadi Mahmoudhi, who is living in exile in France.

Takieddine was apprehended while attempting to take cash out of Libya on a private flight in March 2011, during the NATO-led anti-Gaddafi campaign.

His trial centers on claims that a series of bombings in 2002 in Karachi, Pakistan, were carried out in revenge for the non-payment of bribes agreed during the 1994 sale of a French submarine. The tragedy killed 14 people, including 11 French naval engineers. Takieddine is charged with acting as an intermediary in the deal.

It is alleged that some of the cash involved was transferred back to former Prime Minister Edouard Balladur’s 1995 presidential election campaign. The activities also implicate Nicolas Sarkozy, who was Balladur’s campaign spokesman and budget minister.

If found to be true, the allegations could severely embarrass the former French president, as he together with UK Prime Minister David Cameron played a leading role in instigating the NATO airstrikes that helped topple Gaddafi in October 2011.

The mass media is promulgating the notion that the election of Socialist French President Francois Hollande represents some kind of massive sea change and is a direct challenge to the European Union, and yet Hollande’s past and the people he surrounds himself with confirms the fact that he is merely another committed globalist and an enthusiastic supporter of the dictatorial EU’s sovereignty-stripping ethos.

“In the whole of Europe it’s time for change,” Hollande told cheering crowds who gathered to hear his victory speech in Paris early Monday,” reports the L.A. Times.

“Observers agree that Mr Hollande’s election represents a sea-change in the governance of the eurozone and the management of the single currency crisis,” reports Sky News.

However, any suggestion that Hollande’s defeat of Nicolas Sarkozy represents some kind of major challenge to the European Union and its efforts, in close coordination with the IMF and Goldman Sachs, to exploit the debt crisis for its own political ends, is clearly wide of the mark.

Hollande is merely another creature of the establishment and an enthusiastic pro-European superstate globalist. He supported the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, the document which outlined the introduction of the euro single currency and was itself based on a 1955 Bilderberg blueprint. Hollande also supported the European Constitution in a 2005 referendum despite most of his socialist allies voting against it.

Hollande is the former spokesman for ex-French President Lionel Jospin, another committed globalist who attended the Bilderberg Group meeting in 1996.

He is also a former aide to the last Socialist President in France, Francois Mitterand, a 33rd degree Freemason who commissioned the pyramid at the Louvre to be made out of 666 glass panels – another down to earth “man of the people”. Alongside German Chancellor and Bohemian Grove attendee Helmut Kohl, Mitterand fathered the Maastricht Treaty. According to Bilderberg sleuth Daniel Estulin, Bilderberg were largely responsible for Mitterand’s presidential victory in in 1981.

Hollande’s “special adviser” is none other than Manuel Valls, a former Freemason and 2008 Bilderberg attendee who openly supports the establishment of a European federal superstate at the expense of national sovereignty. Valls has publicly called for the European Commission to control national budgets of EU member nations.

Despite all the media bluster about a “sea change” in France and Hollande representing a threat to the European Union’s political agenda, expect him to be yet another dutiful water carrier for the elite as he taxes the middle class out of existence while continuing to sacrifice French national sovereignty on the altar of the EU superstate.

With Nicolas Sarkozy beginning to prove himself an irritant to the political class in Brussels and moving to amend the terms of the globalists’ cherished Maastricht Treaty, Hollande is being sold by the establishment as a breath of fresh air yet will almost undoubtedly prove to harbor to same stench of anti-democratic authoritarianism that pervades the entire European Union.

Laurent Gbagbo was seized from a cellar underneath his residence in Abidjan on Monday.

The footage shows troops loyal to the internationally recognized President Alassane Ouattara entering the compound with heavy weaponry.

Gunfire can be heard as they clash with Mr Gbagbo’s forces in the grounds of the residence.

They then enter the building, shoot the lock off a door to access what looks like a reception room.

The former president is then seen being given a bullet-proof vest and helmet.

Gbagbo’s surrender brings to an end ten days of fierce fighting in Abidjan, the country’s largest city, and comes after months of a bitter political crisis sparked by a disputed presidential poll in November.

The internationally recognized president of the Ivory Coast has pledged to restore security and prosperity to the country following post-election violence.

Alassane Ouattara made the comments as pictures emerged of the capture of his rival Laurent Gbagbo.